Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Another political scandal, Teachers Association boycotts Race to the Top

A federal grand jury is investigating allegations of public corruption against DA Michael O'Keefe, that resulted from a wire tap of an alleged bookmaker operation more than a year ago.

Authorities are looking into whether O'Keefe protected alleged bookmakers operating on the Cape and gave favorable treatment to the grandson of one of them in an unrelated criminal case.

Look for this to make headlines if indeed, O'Keefe or his office are implicated in wrong doing. Although he's an elected R, it may well turn out that we see more D's and R's go down this year for yet undiscovered wrong doing. Those connected to the Amy Bishop case are being grilled as we speak and would not surprise me to see someone go down for that also.

I've seen it all now. The second largest teachers union in the State has decided to boycott the application to the "Race to the Top" program offered by Obama, perhaps jeopardizing 250 million in grant money. All this over rules set forth for teacher and school performance. Paul Reville, our states education chief is quoted in the Globe as saying, "the federations boycott constitutes a real threat to our capacity to be successful with this proposal".

Sad to see how much power the unions have over our children s education future.

8 Comments:

Jim, is the Framingham teachers union part of the group boycotting this Race to the Top program? In my opinion, if someone is against being held accountable for their job performance, it is usually because they know they are doing a lousy job.

Who is this guy O’Keefe? Is her our DA? Lots of questions on this, but lets start with these, why were they doing the wire tap, was this DA placing bets, what exactly did he do in that instance where criminal charges were involved for someone, and most importantly, is he still serving as the DA?

Unions are a good thing in principle, but too many of them have lost site of what they were designed to do. I think we need unions, but if they are not willing to work and negotiate with employers in these unprecedented economic times, then they are part of the problem, and we need to find a away to get them out of the way.

What is the status of O’Keefe’s job as DA? That is what I want to know. And dam the teachers union. Look at the politicians they support. They support the people who don’t want to be held accountable for their actions, and that is because the teachers union does not want to be held accountable for their actions. It is a big old mess. Congrats by the way on the win the other day.

Seems everything I read here is about the screwups of politicians. Way too much of that going on all over this country. Makes Sarah Palin look like a simple idiot instead of a dangerous person. Guess it is all relative.

So election results show write in candidates for many of the town meetings slots. How do you know if those people are now actually town meeting members? And how do town meeting members get the information they need to be ready for the town meeting starting next month? Seems the process is not really clear to us newbies. But I am betting event though you are a newbie, you know more than the rest of us do.